Yes, Malcolm Turnbull, it's business as usual: disunity, ill-discipline and undermining

Cory Bernardi - a climate 'hardliner' who
is pushing the coalition to stick
with business as usual.

"This is business as usual," Malcolm Turnbull declared this morning, as he defended the decision to release a broad terms of reference for a climate change policy review that has been Coalition policy for years.

But it was business as usual in another more dangerous, even sinister, respect and it doesn't augur well for a Prime Minister who finished the parliamentary year with some cause for optimism.

At the slightest provocation, the hardliners who have never supported Turnbull are on the warpath, questioning the government's timing, tactics and intentions in announcing the review on Monday.

If Turnbull thought his authority within the Coalition party room had been enhanced by recent events, including the passage of the legislation he took to the double dissolution election, the kneejerk ill-discipline of colleagues, led by Cory Bernardi – recently returned from New York – tells us otherwise.

Read Michael Gordon’s comment in today’s Melbourne Age - “Yes, Malcolm Turnbull, it's business as usual: disunity, ill-discipline and undermining.”